About Me

Thursday, August 23, 2012

A Trio of Sorrows

First Sorrow:

Yesterday night, I scalded my left hand with cooking oil while I was cooking dinner. There is a certain technique when it comes to operating the stove in my kitchen which I've never mastered because I hardly cook. Because of that, the fire kept going out and I had to resort to constantly pressing down on the gas-release knob with one hand just to keep the fire going.

And that was enough to drive me insane. I felt like a handicap with one hand stuck on a stupid knob while I had to resort to cooking with the other. So I got majorly pissed, attempted to try another gas-release knob for another stove fire outlet, fired it up and slammed the frying pan onto it.

A hungry man is an angry man, but a hungry man who is having difficulty cooking his dinner is even angrier.

The act of slamming the frying pan down on the stove in pissed mode caused some of the hot oil in it to spill out and land on my left hand and a part of the stove from the impact. It wasn't that painful, it was more like a stinging sensation. I was just lucky I didn't get more oil spilled on my hand. Looking at things from the bright side, huh?

See those 2 reddish-brown dots near my watch and this longish streak of reddish-brown near my knuckles? Those are the impact areas.

I can deal with the sting but what I'm worried about is that those brown scald marks might become permanent at worst or they might take forever to go away at best. When I was younger, I asked mum what those brown marks along her forearms and hands were and she told me they were the scars caused by hot cooking oil droplets. Those scars are still on her after all these donkey years and so, I think mine will also have a high chance of taking up permanent residency on my hand.

I hate scars. Fuck that.

Second Sorrow:

Because it started raining when I was about to leave the office this morning, my new colleague Jess offered Queenie (another new colleague of mine) and me a ride out. After dropping Queenie, Jess and me proceeded to our next drop-off point and right where her car was a couple metres from the gantry barrier, this white Toyota Vios right in front of us started reversing into one of the parking lots and we heard a sickening crunch as the side of the Vios hit the front of Jess's Nissan March.

From my perspective, the Vios driver didn't check the angle from where Jess was approaching and Jess inched a tad too close to it. While Jess went to park her car, me and the Vios driver (Jason is his name) went under the shelter to get out of the rain. There, I told him that Jess and me thought he wanted to get pass the gantry barrier to get out of the carpark too and we weren't expecting him to suddenly reverse into the parking lot next to the gantry.

To cut a long story short, Jason was civil and gentlemanly about the whole matter. When he alighted from his car though, he was looking kinda pissed and so, the very first thing I said to him when I got out was: "Hey, are you okay?". That seemed to calm him down and we were all civil about the whole matter throughout and nobody tried to murder anybody. Glad it turned out that way.

Jason told us he is a school teacher and he even offered to subsidize Jess's repair work depending on how things turn out. After they snapped pics of each other's driving licences and exchanged contact numbers, we drove off. Jess was understandably upset but she took it in stride as I tried cheering her up for the rest of our journey. Brave girl but what a sucky incident.

By the way, there wasn't any discernible damage or scratch on Jason's Vios but Jess's Nissan is now sporting a dent above the front bumper.

Third Sorrow:

When I got to my block and took the lift up to the level where I'm staying at just now, I saw this water pot right next to the lift when I emerged from it. Obviously, somebody didn't want it anymore and dumped it there. Thing is, the block's rubbish chute for this level is just like 4 metres away from the lift.

I know, it's not very elegant to throw a water pot down a rubbish chute and making a cacophonic din as gravity sucks the moderately big object down to ground level (it's 11 storeys down we're talking about here) but one should at least put the pot within the rubbish chute area, right?

I absolutely hate it whenever my block gets vandalised or when litter bugs throw their shit around willy-nilly. I had a mind to place that water pot right outside the door of the culprit with a note attached and written in BIG BOLD letters that read: "THROW YOUR RUBBISH IN THE NEARBY RUBBISH CHUTE INSTEAD, YOU INCONSIDERATE FUCKING TWIT."

But of course, I do not know who dumped the pot there and that just added to the frustration. My family and other guests visit my home occasionally and it would be embarrassing should vandalism or litter give them an eyesore when they do so. And that eyesore extends to myself too. That's the reason why I'm pissed.

I know that this incident is just a minor issue but the accumulation of everything that has happened, compounded by the fact that I'm now going through a major turbulence in my life right now is just.. making me sad. Mentioned turbulence is actually a fourth sorrow but it's something that is too heartbreaking for me to blog about here, at least for now.